Bijou Roy: A Novel

by Ronica Dhar

Overview

In Ronica Dhar's powerful debut, her title character, Bijou Roy, is blissfully experiencing the enchantments of first love, her father passes away, leaving her closed off and shaky. Her career and relationship in limbo, she travels to India to scatter his remains—a ritual traditionally performed by a son—in the river that runs through his native city. However, she doesn't find the peace she hoped to find in laying her father to rest. Instead, she meets Naveen, the son of her father's closest comrade and discovers the intimate details of his political past. Bijou is suddenly swept away in the mysteries of love, grief, and family histories, finding herself caught between two suitors and two countries. Struggling to understand her place in the world, she finds the only way to move forward, is to replace sorrow with hope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250002167
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/17/2012
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.58(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ronica Dhar was a 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in New York City.

Reading Group Guide

1. Consider how the novel uses setting (metaphor of the river; "The rains separate lovers, after all, when roads become rivers") and ideas around the things that literally separate us, whether distance or death.

2. Bijou's perspective on the act of immersing her father's ashes is interrupted by thoughts of her life in D.C. and other events that seem, to her, to have led to this rite. She is clearly conflicted about the rite itself, but why? And in what other moments of the novel does Bijou compare here to there or now to before?

3. Why is the book titled Bijou Roy, and not, for instance, Nitish Roy, considering that his character arguably occupies the most room in the story? What other title might you consider for the novel?

4. Consider the women who influence Bijou throughout the novel: Sheela, Pari, Anuja, Kamla, Ketaki, and, of course, Billie Holiday. What do you think is their role in shaping Bijou's experience? You might like to review chapter ten, wherein these characters gather as an ensemble, at last. Consider, too, Zenia's role at the dinner "get-together" later (an event further shaped by Ketaki's elopement).

5. How might Bijou's relationships with Crane and Naveen compare to Nitish's relationships with Kamla and Sheela? In other words, how do Bijou's choices and experiences as a young adult echo those of her parent's?

6. Unpack this quote and explain its larger significance to Bijou's experience in India and with Naveen: "Perhaps there were no coincidences, only collisions, only physics and whatever copacetic philosophy could be sussed out in a place like this; if not this café, then one very much like it, somewhere halfway between home and the world, amid friends, cold glass, and smoke."

7. To what extent does Crane represent "the boy next door" and, similarly, to what extent does Naveen represent "India?"

8. How has Naveen's relationship with Ashok (and Nitish) defined his life before he met Bijou? Why does he desire to involve Bijou in conversations about their parents?

9. The first chapter contains a number of allusions to Shakespeare's Hamlet, including the lines spoken by Ophelia after her father Polonius's death: "And will he not come again?" Compare this with the middle of chapter seven, when Naveen and Bijou walk along Shakespeare Sarani Road to the Maidan, where conversation involves Hamlet more directly.

10. Discuss the role of photographs: chapter six (the photo album) and also the photo of Bijou that Naveen has in his room.

11. Chapter six is told entirely from the perspective of Nitish. It is a flashback to 1967 and follows Nitish through his mid-20s as he embraces "revolutionary" ideas. Consider it against the scene in chapter three when Nitish, in a conversation with Padam, says, "When you're that age, you think you know everything. The question of sanity is a moot point."

12. In what the author has referred to as a coda of sorts, the book concludes in Nitish's perspective. The prose strings together a number of his memories, largely in fragments, and concludes by landing on one significant idea. What is it? How does it define a "purpose" in life? How does it define a father-daughter relationship?

Editorial Reviews

A jewel of a story…Dhar reveals the richness and complexity of love, of family, and of nationhood.” —Abraham Verghese, New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone

“Ronica Dhar captures the struggles of family and cultural identity with such tenderness and depth of feeling that she makes these subjects completely her own. Bijou Roy is a thoughtful, elegant novel.” —Ann Patchett

“A beautifully constructed novel… Touching, lyrical, and sly, Bijou Roy continually takes us by surprise—and leaves us with the sense of something precious on every page.” —Charles Baxter

“Propelled by skillful, luminous prose.” —Publishers Weekly

“Here's to Ronica Dhar and Bijou Roy, two flashing new stars in the literary heavens. A wonderfully smart and soulful novel, beyond all first-novel qualifications. Plain good.” —Beverly Lowry

“With harrowing honesty and exquisite grace, Ronica Dhar's debut fully inhabits the immigrant experience of two generations of a family and then, by the most unexpected leaps of imagination, leaves it behind to explore the empty spaces of genuine tragedy. Important by any measure, Bijou Roy is a story that is at once timely and timeless, with evidence on every page that you're in the hands of a fine new voice in American fiction.” —Saher Alam

“I love Ronica Dhar's rich, complex, and wonderfully written novel Bijou Roy. The urgency of Bijou's story as she leaves America for India after the death of her father, her search with Naveen for their father's complicated past, the subtle, pressing revelations of secrets captured this reader with its dark mystery and deep affection for Bijou.” —Susan Richards Shreve

“The world seems both enormous and intimate in this gem of a novel by Ronica Dhar. She has created an unforgettable heroine who is poised between countries, stages of life, and ways of understanding her places and possibilities. Dhar resists sentiment but succumbs to beauty over and over again in both her authorial stance and her fine, lucid prose. This is a wondrous first novel, a true debut.” —Elizabeth Alexander

From the Publisher

In her deft debut, Dhar examines the consequences of secrets shared between families against the politically charged backdrop of modern India. As the eldest of two daughters, U.S.-raised Bijou Roy struggles to fulfill traditional male roles for the burial of her father, Nitish, culminating in a trip with her mother and sister to Calcutta to scatter his ashes. In the unfamiliar country, each step of the process reinforces Bijou's alienation, from the people and culture as well as from her mother, who continues to keep Nitish's past shrouded in secrecy. It's only after meeting Naveen, the son of Nitish's oldest friend, that Bijou begins to comprehend her father's political entanglements and the reasons her parents migrated years before. As she learns more about her father, Bijou predictably gains insight into her own character, but Bijou's struggle to reconcile tradition with the demands of the modern world is propelled by skillful, luminous prose. (July)

Publishers Weekly